Oct. 30, 1902. 



THE AMKUICAN BEE .lOllRNAL. 



695 



more efl'ect and weight than with 1000 members. I think he 

 made a ffood sug'jfestion when he said we oiijjht to write to 

 our representatives and senators in Conjfress when any- 

 thing relating to bee-keeping, or anything else we are In- 

 terested in, is up for discussion ; and if we could have .^niio 

 or 10,000 members in this Association, and order the (icn- 

 eral Manager, or Secretary, at a certain time, to notify all 

 members to write to their representatives and senators, 

 they would do it, and it might have great efl'ect. I also be- 

 lieve in working up the propaganda for advertising honey, 

 and that much can be done among the newspapers of the 

 country. They will not do it for me alone, or for you who 

 have honey to sell, but the Association has no honey to sell. 

 If t,hey would get up a line of articles on the use of honey, 

 and mail it to certain newspapers in the country, I believe 

 they would publish it, and it would create a greater demand 

 for honey among the people. You would be surprised to 

 hear the reports I am hearing in Chicago nearly every day 

 about the honey I am trying to put out. Of course, it is 

 pure honey. What will help one will help the whole mem- 

 bership of the Association. I wish the Board of Directors 

 would take up this matter, or this committee that is to be 

 appointed now, and try to get information about honey be- 

 fore the people more generally. 



Mr. Abbott — On that matter of propaganda, there is a 

 thing comes to my mind that I intended to say, and I didn't. 

 I heartily agree with Mr. York, and we have before us here 

 a striking illustration of what can be done by a little ener- 

 getic advertising ; and, not to be personal, the illustration 

 is so good I can not help but refer to it. This little book 

 which the Colorado Bee-Keepers' Association, or Mr. Work- 

 ing himself, indi\idually, got out, ought to make the Na- 

 tional Association a little ashamed of the only thing it has 

 ever issued in years. It looks very cheap by the side of 

 that beautiful illustration that was gotten up to advertise 

 this meeting, and it has tine half-tones in it, and it is got- 

 ten up in good style ; and I noticed, when a gentleman came 

 into my office, four or five of them were lying on my desk ; 

 the gentleman took one up and looked at it, and said, " What 

 is that ?" I said, "That is issued by the Colorado Bee- 

 Keepers' Association." He said, "Could I have that?" 

 " Yes, sir, with pleasure. That is what it was sent for." 

 And they were all called for in a very short time. The last 

 report (referring to the annual report of Buffalo conven- 

 tion), as it appears, and as it is, is as good as we provided 

 money to make it. I am not complaining of Mr. York ; he 

 made a real good book for what he got for it, and people 

 are wanting it, and there are inquiries, and in about a 

 month I had SO inquiries for this book, wanting to know 

 if they could get a copy of it, and there was an opportunity 

 to advertise the Association, and I didn't know where there 

 was a copy to be had. This Association never has had 

 good literature of that kind ; it has always been afraid some- 

 body would find out it was at work ; it was afraid to let the 

 newspapers know it was in the city. We have gone to great 

 cities and they never knew we were there ; and we never 

 had a committee to go and tell the reporters that five or six 

 " queen-bees " had come to town. But there were members 

 live enough here, and, five or six weeks before, let them 

 know, and we were besieged for photographs. And that is 

 what propaganda means. If we could get a little more into 

 the National Association there would be more honey sold. 



Mr. Taylor — In talking about propaganda, and that the 

 Association should teach propagandi, it seems to me that 

 one propaganda that covers this question of advertising as 

 well as the question of the price of honey has, so far, not 

 been mentioned. I think that it is in the hands of the bee- 

 keepers, if they will, to raise the price of honey SO percent 

 over what it is at the present time, if this suggestion would 

 be carried out. I don't know as it will be. We are like that 

 farmer that Mr. Abbott described — we put our thumbs under 

 our suspenders, and when we can get a crop of honey we say, 

 " Let her go !" and we ship it off to Chicago, or some other 

 large city, and let somebody else sell it for us. That is the 

 way I had always done till last year ; it is the way most 

 bee-keepers have done ; there are a few here and there — no 

 doubt our chairman could name some of them — who, in- 

 stead of doing that, have taken their honey and their wag- 

 ons and have gone out and have asked SO to 100 percent 

 more than they could have gotten in any other way, and 

 they have sold their honey readily, and they have gotten 

 rid of it without any trouble in getting their pay from the 

 commission men or anybody else ; they have, at the same 

 time, educated a taste for honey, and they have spread the 

 market, they have enlarged the market. Of course, there 

 are exceptions ; there are men who produce so much honey 

 that they could not think of anything of that kind, their 



honey would go to supply the demands of the cities ; but 

 there are thousands of small towrjs in ourcountry that have 

 no supply of honey simply because the men in the neigh- 

 borhood of such a town who produce honey of any amount 

 will pack it up and ship it off in order to get rid of the 

 trouble of doing anything further with it. We have an 

 immense market in this country for honey, if we would cul- 

 tivate it. There is no question at all in my mind that if 

 bee-keepers would take up this point and try to cultivate 

 this market that perhaps the price of honey could be in- 

 creased SO percent in a very few years without any difficulty 

 at all. I think we can do more for ourselves than the Gov- 

 ernment in any way can do for us. 



W. L. Hawley — I wish to indorse what Prof. Benton 

 has said with regard to sending letters to your representa- 

 tives. We have had some experience in that line in send- 

 ing letters to our representatives, members of Congress, 

 and personal friends, and the influence was such that you 

 would be astonished. Word came out from Michigan, say- 

 ing, " Boys, do all you can ; write from one to a dozen let- 

 ters a week and keep it up constantly ; keep it up." Well, I 

 wrote two letters, then I wrote two more, then I increased 

 it to five, then I wrote five more ; I kept that up for the en- 

 tire six weeks, and I was only one of IS that did that. 

 Michigan, California, Colorado, Nebraska, and every place 

 where they have a beet-factory, did that very same thing. 

 You know the reason why ; there was an agitation trying 

 to reduce the tariff upon sugar on the raw material, and, 

 consequently, we beet-men did not want that. It is the 

 same way with this honey. Mr. Benton says fire 20 letters 

 in. Double that, make it 40, make it 60, 80, 100 : you can't 

 get too many there ; the more you get there the better : 

 every man, every woman, every child, every bee-keeper, 

 keep it up, and then you will find that your work is accom- 

 plished ; and until you do that you will accomplish nothing. 



The convention then adjourned until 1:30 o'clock p.m. 

 (Coutinued next week.) 



I Contributed Articles. | 



How to Distinguish a Perfect Queen. 



BY DR. E. G.^LLUP. 



HOW to distinguish the difference between a perfect 

 queen and an imperfect one by the looks, shape, etc.. 

 is the question. A perfect queen is usually (now mind 

 I don't say always) larger than an imperfect one. She has 

 a large and perfect abdomen, tapering and pointed, while 

 the imperfect one has a smaller abdomen, more blunt ; and 

 there is usually quite a difference in the shape of the work- 

 ers : in examining the queen nymph, the one having the 

 " missing link " attachment, and the other not having that 

 attachment, both of the same age, the difference in size 

 is very marked to the most casual observer. Even where 

 both are equally supplied with a large amount of royal jelly, 

 the difference in size is plainly visible after they are 

 hatched, and all their lives plainly showing that the embryo 

 does draw substance through the umbilical cord. 



Many queen-breeders notify their customers not to be 

 alarmed if the queen appears small, as she will increase in 

 size after she commences breeding, etc. All those degen- 

 erate or improperly reared queens do appear small, and 

 they are small even after they commence laying, in compar- 

 ison to one rightly reared. I have occasionally had a very 

 small queen that appeared to be prolific for a short time, 

 but they invariably do not hold out for any length of time. 



On page 596, W. H. Laws says: " Permit me to say that 

 as great a percent of large, fully developed queens were ob- 

 tained by the Doolittle method as by any method ever 

 used." In recommending Mr. Doolittle as a queen-breeder, 

 all the queens that I have seen and received from him have 

 been fully developed and large, to all appearances, but the 

 fault found with them was this : They did not prove prolific, 

 and I have repeatedly had to explain why, etc. Years ago 

 I received queens from different breeders, recommended as 

 extra-prolific, but they in no case turned out as recommended. 

 Now, I did not jump at the conclusion that said parties 

 falsely represented their queens as prolific, but I had a 

 theory in mind which was this : That queens shipped 



